Before I left my room, I put a copy of Albert Camus’s Lyrical and Critical Essays in my black carrying sack with the red letters The Tennessean marked on it. I walked across the Potomac on Key Bridge — one of the world’s loveliest vistas — to the Metro stop. The train came along shortly. … Read more
In a letter of October 6, 1956, Flannery O’Connor wrote that “part of Purgatory must be the realization of how little it would have to take to make a vice into a virtue.” She went on to remark that “the Communion of Saints has something to do with the fact that the burdens we bear … Read more
Wars and rumors of war are familiar themes in Scripture and familiar themes in the daily press. Indeed, the very expression of “wars and rumors of war” is from Matthew 24:6. We stumbled into a small war about a year after the largest threat of the modern era seemed to collapse by not fighting, though … Read more
Every so often on a recorded or live concert, I will hear a program, usually a musical program, often bluegrass or country-western, in which the master of ceremonies will introduce some singer. As the singer approaches the microphone, the announcer will say, most friendly like, “Ladies and Gentlemen, won’t you please make welcome. . . … Read more
One morning I noticed a striking filler piece at the end of a column on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. I did not read the explanatory italics, so I did not realize just why this particular passage was there. What it contained was the following brief citation from Malcolm Muggeridge, from an … Read more
Readings at Mass are designed for our instruction, for our salvation, for our minds, that we may know the truth. The Second Reading for the Midnight Mass of Christmas is taken from St. Paul’s Epistle to Titus. We go along in our ways. Suddenly we read or hear something at Midnight Mass where we never … Read more
As I try to reread T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” on Ash Wednesday, a practice I heartily recommend to all those who doubt our greatness, so I also try to meditate on Belloc’s The Four Men during those most Christian of days at the end of October and the beginning of November. I have always felt … Read more
In an interview in Humanities (May-June 1989), the late Walker Percy called this century “the strangest century that I’ve ever heard or read about.” What does this strangeness consist in? For Percy, this century is at the same time the most humanitarian century and “the century in which men have killed more of each other … Read more
When John Paul II recently visited the Dutch island of Curacao in the Caribbean, it was, as I recall, the ninety-third different political entity he has visited. Since then he has logged a couple more. No doubt, John Paul has more frequent-flyer miles than all the Apostles and all the previous popes put together. No … Read more
A friend of mine went to Mass last fall at a University chapel on the campus of one of Virginia’s several state universities. Or at least he assumed it was a Catholic church when he went in. Looking about, he found no tabernacle, no crucifix, no statues, kneelers, or other usual signs of Catholic presence. … Read more
Ever since I read Ralph Mclnerny’s remark about the “fragility of the West” in the February Crisis, I have been thinking about its implications. Our situation is paradoxical. For over 50 years, the principal enemy of the West has been Marxist socialism in its various forms. Practically all political literature has been written in order … Read more
In an interview shortly before he died, Hans Urs von Balthasar was asked about young priests. His response was rather frank: Matters which cannot be embraced in prayer are not worthy to be thought of, and even less to be preached. Thus [many young priests] have arrived at a good criterion for what theology really … Read more
Initially, I confess, a “prayer breakfast” strikes me as a very Protestant thing. We Catholics are more likely, by ourselves, to have Mass together quietly, then go out for breakfast as a kind of overflow from worship. Faith with fellowship typifies the one; sacrament then sociability the other, however much faith, fellowship, and sacrament belong … Read more
William Burleigh at Scripps-Howard in Cincinnati happily manages each year to give me a copy of the latest paperbound collection of Peanuts. Bill says simply, “Schulz is a genius.” He is right, of course. This year’s collection is entitled, “If Beagles Could Fly.” Actually, I do not like the animal characters in Peanuts, particularly Snoopy. … Read more
Popcorn, I know, unlike wine, was never mentioned in Scripture. This omission was not, I think, a divine oversight but a reminder for the faithful that they might have to await the discovery of the New World to find out all the good things God had in store for them. You will have to remember … Read more
Milton, I believe, wrote an essay on his blindness. This essay will not be so poignant nor so profound, but it will deal with seeing and not seeing with our very eyes. The difference between being blind and having one eye, as I have recently learned, is in a way infinite. If you have one … Read more
The Dawn Mass on Christmas contains a reading from the Epistle to Titus: “But when the kindness and generosity of God Our Savior dawned upon the world, then, not for any good deeds of our own, but because He was merciful, He saved us.” What is it that comes from generosity and kindness, that is … Read more
In Eric Voegelin’s book Plato and Aristotle we find these words: “The contemporaries of a crisis, however, are reluctant to recognize the magnitude of the problem.” I had only read snippets of the address that Josef Cardinal Ratzinger had given the American archbishops in March until I received the April issue of 30 Days, which … Read more
Bad news makes good headlines. We all know this, of course. We live in a time that specializes in secular apocalypse, probably because we have lost the sense of religious apocalypse. Yet even religious apocalypse seems to be enjoying a revival. The end of the world is big business. We are said to have too … Read more
On clement Street in San Francisco this spring, I did my usual prowl of the used-bookstores, but I also managed a couple of hours at McDonald’s downtown, a rather chaotic but rich used-bookstore off Turk or Ellis. There I found a book called The Ideal Reader: Selected Essays by Jacques Riviere. I had, perhaps in … Read more